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Published Jun 2013
240 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
In Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher offered a paradigm-shattering look at the lives of adolescent women. Now Pipher is back with another ground-breaking examination of everyday life, this time exploring how to conquer our fears about the major environmental issues that confound us and transform them into a positive force in our lives.
Pipher emphasizes the importance of taking small, positive steps to preserve what's important, drawing from her own experiences as part of a group fighting energy company TransCanada's installation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline across the Midwest, which will sit atop the Ogallala Aquifer, the source of 40% of the United States' fresh water. The challenges she confronts reveal surprising answers to the critical questions we face: How do we mobilize ourselves and our communities to work together to solve global problems? How do we stay happy amid very difficult situations? And what is the true meaning of hope?
Both profound and practical, The Green Boat explains how we can attend to the world around us with calmness, balance, and great love.
"Starred Review. Serious, yet accessible, realistic without being alarmist, this could be the most effectively inspirational book available about an individual's relationship to the global environmental crisis." - Publishers Weekly
"A therapeutic analysis of global crises and enthusiastic ideas on how to implement changes." - Kirkus
"Mary Pipher takes on our planet's greatest problems with the skills of a truly gifted therapist. She knows why we avoid and deny the truth and she knows how we can heal ourselves and our communities even as we try to heal the earth. This book is a deep and true gift." - Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth
"Let this strong, honest book be your companion now in these tough times, as you make real your love for our planet home. Mary Pipher spares us moral sermons and apocalyptic scenarios. Instead she shares her own journey. So we learn with her how to survive despair, how to feed the heart with beauty and the company of others, how to find balance together in the face of uncertainty and even moments of failure." - Joanna Macy, author, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess we're in Without Going Crazy
"Mary Pipher has been our wise and steadfast guide through the worlds of adolescence, aging and how families can teach humane values in a culture where everything is for sale. Now she's tackling the hardest question - how we can get past denial to reverse the human caused climate change that jeopardizes the habitability of the world. As we'd expect, she does it thoughtfully, passionately, and ultimately with hope." - Paul Loeb, author Soul of a Citizen
"Mary Pipher has a genius for illuminating in plain and poetic language the fundamental challenges we face in our complex and often overwhelming world. She maps out how we should wrestle with the realities of climate change and then shows us practical ways to both savor and help serve our planet. This is a life-affirming book full of clarity, compassion and hope." - Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., author of Mindsight and The Developing Mind
"This book is filled with wisdom, compassion, and the reminder that we are all still tuned to relationship. It personifies the hope and solidarity that comes from action, reminds us that one of our most effective skills is sticking together, and is a fantastic revelation of the big tent that we can be in. If you believe in honesty, balance, democracy and taking care of the land, please read this book. It will be a tonic." – Peter Forbes, senior advisor, Center for Whole Communities, and author of Our Land, Ourselves
"With penetrating psychological wisdom and great heart, Mary Pipher invites us on a journey of deepening awareness that can save our planet. This book is a passionate and eloquent wake-up call: Please read it, and share it with anyone you know who cares about our living world." - Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
This information about The Green Boat was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mary Pipher graduated in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in Clinical Psychology in 1977. She was a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio and has received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations, one of which she returned to protest psychologists' involvement in enhanced interrogations at Guantánamo and other black sites.
Mary was born in the Ozarks and grew up in rural Nebraska. As a girl she liked reading, writing, swimming, being outdoors and talking to her friends and family. She still enjoys these activities. She is also a community organizer and activist for many causes. She lives in Nebraska with her husband Jim.
Pipher is the author of 10 books ...
Name Pronunciation
Mary Pipher: PIE-fur
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
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